House of Upside-Down
by Angela Kip
Summary: It's well-known that prolonged periods of isolation have unusual effects, especially when the specimen is a child. But what about when the child in question is able to rip open reality with her bare hands and easily meet someone sixty years in the future? Oneshot.


**A/N: After finishing Infinite, I started realizing how many similarities there are between Elizabeth and Eleanor. (BEGIN SPOILERS.) Both have cruel mothers who isolate them, both are sold off (to the Little Sister's Orphanage or to Comstock), they're childlike, they're influenced by your actions...and that's just a few of the ways. My headcanon is that Eleanor _is_ Elizabeth, just born sixty years later in a city under the ocean instead of one in the sky. Constants and variables, right? Anyway, hopefully the story will now make more sense in context. (END SPOILERS.)_  
_**

**Warning for some blood and brief description of mistreatment of a child.**

"_When I was a girl, I dreamt of standing in a room looking at a girl who was and was not myself, who stood looking at another girl, who also was and was not myself…"_

-Rosalind Lutece

* * *

The studies show the sorts of things that happen when basic survival needs are not met, one of those needs being companionship, and Elizabeth isn't quite sure if this makes her a specimen or if Songbird disqualifies her. Either way, her best guess is that this is where the tears came from: the acute loneliness, a point that is escalated by the memory of opening her first tear at the age of four after waking to find that the one stuffed animal she had treasured was now gone.

Perhaps it should have been a more inspirational moment, but in all actuality she had simply finished crying and pulled apart the two halves of the air in front of her to look at a playground. There had been children. They hadn't seen her, even when she had stood right in front of them.

* * *

She stays up late, usually reading about the world outside of a little tower in Columbia. Other times she stays frozen under the bedcovers, waiting to see if They will come again like the time They came to take her teddy bear. There was one time when she stayed awake until two in the morning in this manner, and her monumental effort had paid off. She'd been rewarded with a person's outline, a figure too dark to see, and a tugging at her hair and then a _snip_. They'd come only for a lock of her hair and a quick rummaging around her living space, and then They were gone.

The experience had left her feeling even lonelier than before, with vivid images of children her age flooding her dreams. It was something physical, a tearing inside of her left untouched by her faithful mechanical companion, and with it was a desperate drive to do something about it.

* * *

She opens tears to places where other children are. Schools, parks, child-friendly restaurants, after-school care programs, households overflowing with little ones. None of them give the slightest indication that they can see her. She opens tears until the headaches are blinding and force her to her knees, but comes up fruitless.

The specimen dries her tears, asks for another stack of books, and continues growing up in solitude. It will go on this way until she is twelve and a half.

* * *

This is the age at which the vivid dreams begin. She's given up on children for the most part, though sometimes they still come. The majority of it is from Paris, her latest interest which is rapidly becoming an obsession, and so she frequently falls asleep still clutching a book of French grammar or the like. And then there's the city she doesn't understand.

It's a city with water out every window and even the ceiling – so much water. Sometimes there is blood and sometimes there are rose petals, and sometimes people turn into angels after they die. Most of all she sees the little girls. There are so many little girls. What did they come for?

_Close your eyes. Focus. Now open a tear._

It takes work and it makes her nauseous, but the space in front of her rips open and there is the city. No, it's not the city. It's the bedroom of a girl who looks like she can't be a day over twelve, and there she is sitting in the corner with a doll in her lap. Now she turns with wide eyes towards the tear, and it's Elizabeth's first realization of what's going on.

She can see.

"_Are you…are you real? No, wait." _The girl stands and peers through the tear, an amused little smile on her face. _"You're one of Mum's jokes, aren't you?"_

"I don't know your mother," Elizabeth says, hardly daring to breathe. "I'm real. Who are you? What year is it?"

"_So you're a time traveler, then!" _comes the reply. It's got just a touch too much delight to be genuine. _"It's nineteen sixty-five. And where you are?"_

"Nineteen-oh-five. Don't," she warns the girl, who's about to try and stick her hand through the tear. "If you try to pull things between the worlds, they go away."

"_You've got a sky," _the other says instead of responding. _"I've seen pictures of them. We haven't got a sky here, but I think there's one in the House of Upside-Down. I'm Eleanor Lamb, by the way. Who are you?"_

"Elizabeth," and she's fiddling with her sleeves, feeling a bit out of place at not being able to present a last name. Eleanor steps a little closer, cautious but interested.

"_Your room is huge! Where are your mum and dad?"_

"They don't stay with me" is the only response Elizabeth can offer.

"_Never?" _She shakes her head. _"Your mum must not be very nice. Mine isn't either." _Eleanor gives the doll she's holding a little squeeze. _"I had a daddy, but he went on a trip. I'm going to bring him back, though."_

It ends up being a long talk, so long that it finishes in the foggy recesses of Elizabeth's memory as her head bobs with drowsiness. Eleanor speaks through her yawns.

"_Can you come back? You can do that thing again, right?"_

"I don't know. I'll try."

"_I think you're pretty neat, Lizabeth, for a time traveler lady…"_

The tear closes, and the child is left stretched out on the floor with a content smile on her face. Her eyelids flutter once, twice, and then she's out for the night.

* * *

She doesn't know it, but to Them this is just another data point, a single line in a typed report: _Specimen kept a tear open for a lengthy amount of time, spoke with other child._ Then the file will be shut again, handed off to the next person, and the study will continue.

The mother of young Miss Lamb, of course, has no cause for suspicion.

* * *

"_You're bleeding."_

The shorter girl rubs the back of her hand under her nose, and with a decisive wrist movement flicks most of the offending fluid on the ground. "It's nothing. That always happens when I do this."

There's a moment of silence before Eleanor raises her head. _"It was nice of you to come back. Mum doesn't want me playing with the other children. I hacked the security, but she made a tougher one. I'm going to hack that one, too, though."_

Elizabeth's eyebrows crease together, but all she asks is, "Do you have a book on that?"

"_On hacking? No. I taught myself. Here, let me show you."_ The item she grabs looks suspiciously like a Voxaphone, but when she tries to toss it through the rip in reality, it flickers like a malfunctioning film and disappears. Simultaneously, the blood vessels in Elizabeth's nose reopen, and she bends forward, pressing hard to try and stop it.

"_Oh. Sorry, miss."_

Elizabeth's enthusiasm isn't dampened in the slightest. Quite the contrary, her mind is seized with excitement at the idea of learning about something so unusual there still isn't a book about it sixty years in the future. "But you can just tell me. I want to hear about it! I want to hear about everything!"

And the day passes just like that.

* * *

Over the next eight months, they slowly come to understand each other. Most days the tear stays open for hours, though off and on as it takes spurts of mental power on Elizabeth's side; on the days she is sick or intensely focused on something, it doesn't open at all. Still, the majority of the time it is there, two girls talking or just working side by side. And through the gap between them, they learn.

In the year 1905, a girl sits captive in a tower with her books piled halfway to the ceiling – piles and piles of them, organized by when she last read them so that she knows when to reabsorb prior knowledge. She is a one-woman encyclopedia. A father and a mother will never be there, only Them, and indeed, she doesn't even know Their names. She has more important things to think about than people who insist on coming in while she sleeps to steal teddy bears and clip her nails and cut her hair as if she's a science experiment.

In 1965, another child fights against a painful reality after being awakened years prior from a trance not unlike one caused by hardcore drugs. Her father, dead by a hypnotized hand, the woman who holds the girl's head under her own bath water fairly regularly so as to "accustom you" – to what, exactly? There may not be an answer. It's a world where sick little girls march neatly along with their daddies, one hand gripping his and the other her harvesting needle, at just the right angle so she can lean forward and point: _"Look, Mr. Bubbles, it's an angel. I can see light coming from his belly…"_

It's the same sky above and the same ocean beneath them, but that's a little hard to believe.

"_Is Rapture around yet in 1905?"_

"I don't know. Is Columbia still there?"

* * *

Though neither of the children know it, They notice Eleanor's world at the same time They come in to crudely document Comstock's daughter's menarche. Elizabeth wakes hours later, opens the same tear, and finds that there's no physical symptoms.

The two stand on opposite sides of this tear now, tossing a film canister and catching it and tossing it and catching it and tossing it and it's _real_.

The numbers on Their petty little charts skyrocket. For the next seven years, They'll be too scared to go in to her.

* * *

It happens when Eleanor is fourteen, the tear between their world coming up on its second birthday. Elizabeth has watched her hack bits and bobs of security before, but this time she's fiddling with little parts of "a Vita-Chamber" and "ADAM," names that don't make sense.

"_It's for getting my daddy back," _she explains. _"I miss him."_

"But won't your mother get mad?" is the naïve response.

"_Yes, but…"_ Eleanor looks up and closes her eyes, as if bringing back a distant memory. _"When I was little, I learned that you're always, _always_ safe with Daddy._" Opening her eyes, she looks into her friend's. _"Maybe you ought to get a daddy, too."_

"I don't know," Elizabeth says, "but I think I could help you find yours."

And that's how they do it. They stay up late, one bent over a book and calling tips to the other, who makes adjustments to her machinery. And meanwhile, they learn.

The girl from 1906 learns about things that do not exist in her world. She sits, twirling her fingers through her ponytail, as Eleanor tries to explain what television is. Sometimes she'll talk about her days as a "Little Sister," when she was very small, and how her "Big Daddy" protected her, which is why she has to get him back. Other times, her face will twist into a scowl as she recounts events caused by her "mean, nasty mum."

The girl from 1966 learns of Paris and things that come from books. Once in a while she'll ask to see Songbird, whom she finds mildly entertaining. On other occasions she'll be hearing about what Elizabeth knows of life sixty years from Eleanor's time, most of which entails food, parades, and how difficult it is to bend over while wearing a corset.

"_I'm Rapture's daughter."_

"I'm the Lamb of Columbia."

They understand each other completely.

* * *

The year ends in a seven now.

"_Mother knows what I'm doing."_

"Are you afraid of her?"

"_A little bit. She's a real meanie, to say the least."_

There's a silence.

"I'd miss you if you went away, Eleanor."

"_I won't go away."_

"Promise?"

"..._I'd tell you first, at least."_

* * *

It's another six months, and the new year's broken, and it's bitterly cold when Elizabeth opens the window. (Rapture has no such temperature issues.)

"_So, if I were to have to go away for a while…"_ Eleanor glances up briefly. _"Does the tear move?"_

"No." Elizabeth is struggling into a coat. "I can only open it if there's one around to open, and I can't see past this room."

Eleanor lowers her head again. _"It's too bad you can't come through. I'd take you to my father, and…"_

The rest of the sentence is left unspoken. Both of them know that _can't_ in that context means _won't_; yet the idea of going through is tempting, so tempting. There's the promise of escape and a different life, one where the prisoner is freed, but something deep within Elizabeth screams against it. She rubs her hands together.

"I…I don't…"

And there's a tender little smile. _"I understand."_ It's genuine, and that makes Elizabeth fling herself forward in a moment of spontaneity, gripping Eleanor around the shoulders so hard that she knocks her over. There's laughter.

They're still little girls. Sixteen now, but age hardly matters when both are prisoners – little girls all the same, one stuck in the dance looking for her daddy and the other trying to escape her own loneliness. Neither has ever really had to think about much apart from the here and now, because that's what little girls are.

"_I'll come back," _Eleanor says without thinking. She doesn't know if she will be able to.

"Great," Elizabeth says with a grin. "And when you do, I'll teach you more dancing. I'll learn the lady's part…"

And for a fleeting second there's a good feeling inside, long enough for Eleanor to walk over to the door and give a tiny wave. As she closes the door to her room, Elizabeth shuts the tear, and the tower – just as it's always been – is completely still.


End file.
